I am not a 3D artist, so it took me an entire week to learn, from scratch, enough 3DS Max basics, along with Chunk Merge, to manage this fix, so thanks again to gechbal for allowing me to upload it! It feels much more worthwhile knowing that people other than myself can now benefit from that labor.
I'm glad you've provided this fix. As it stands, the emperor's will, by the same guy, (armor General Tullius wares with immersive armors) has a similar problem on the bottom of the knot in his sash.
This is just a mesh update, so any texture mods to the armor should be automatically compatible. Just load my mesh files after just in case the texture mod includes the original mesh as well.
As infuriating as it was to work with the tools needed to make this mod, I'm not terribly keen on diving back into that mess. But if someone else knows how to add weight slider support, and wants to share an updated mesh I'd be happy to upload it and give them credit.
If I ever finish up with the current stuff I'm working on I may come back to take a look at this myself, but don't hold your breath. It could be a year, or more, before I'm feeling that masochistic again.
Ah now i have to download this ! Never saw it before . It works just fine with immersive armors because they use the same file structure ? Oh never mind. The file structure is correct ( in SE at least )
One question: I have trouble after editing a mesh of an existing armor - Everytime that I import to .nif it appears as a completely new model. That means the edited armor won't have the "bones" from the original armor before I edited some polys on 3DsMax! Any help?
I am still a noob in 3DS Max, so I don't know if this will help answer your question or not, but this tutorial, by Derp Meowslurp, helped me a great deal with (re)attaching a collision mesh from the original nif to my edited nif, using chunk merge, as well as how to copy/paste branches from one .nif to another using nifskope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKWU9BFy9c4
Both of those skills are necessary since editing a mesh in 3DS Max doesn't always preserve all the data that accompanies a nif (beyond the basic trishapes) through the import/export process.
Also, one of the last tricks I discovered was to avoid using the 'convert to editable mesh' command in 3DS max, as this seems to be a surefire way to destroy all that extra nif data, aside from the basic trishapes. Instead of converting, you can just click on the words 'editable mesh' that appears near the upper right hand corner, as seen highlighted in blue in the 3rd image of this mod page.
For the words 'editable mesh' to appear in the selection box/window, you have to make sure your active cursor focus is on the mesh itself, so the cursor looks like a plus sign, and not some other tool, like the magnifying glass from zoom, for instance. You also have to make sure the 2nd tab is active (the one that looks like a little blue rainbow, rather than the first tab that looks like a little yellow sun).
Then, when you click on 'editable mesh', 3DS Max should give you a warning indicating that performing edits may ruin that extra data. I click 'yes', and then perform my edits. My edits were small, so I was able to preserve all the extra nif data upon export (except when dealing with the collision mesh for the 'drop-able' version of the nif - that requires chunk merge). I have no doubt, however, that making substantial changes to an existing nif will, at some point, corrupt things like bone/skin data, at which point you would probably have to know how to design those elements from scratch within 3DS Max.
Nightasy's old 3DS Max youtube tutorial series is also still very helpful.
And that is about the extent of advice I can give on 3DS Max given my VERY limited experience.
edit Oh, and here's one other critical little pitfall to look out for: Oftentimes the main txt field of a nif branch will get reset to some generic value when exporting from 3DS Max. To see if this is happening you have to open the original nif in nifskope side by side with your edited nif, and then compare the txt field for each branch as it appears in the bottom window of nifskope (the txt field will be near the top of that bottom window), to make sure the txt fields match. If they don't match, edit the txt field in the edited nif to match the txt field of the original.
Btw, this was all done with the 2016 version of 3DS Max, because I had some issues with the 2017 nif plugin.
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If I ever finish up with the current stuff I'm working on I may come back to take a look at this myself, but don't hold your breath. It could be a year, or more, before I'm feeling that masochistic again.
One question: I have trouble after editing a mesh of an existing armor - Everytime that I import to .nif it appears as a completely new model. That means the edited armor won't have the "bones" from the original armor before I edited some polys on 3DsMax! Any help?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKWU9BFy9c4
Both of those skills are necessary since editing a mesh in 3DS Max doesn't always preserve all the data that accompanies a nif (beyond the basic trishapes) through the import/export process.
Also, one of the last tricks I discovered was to avoid using the 'convert to editable mesh' command in 3DS max, as this seems to be a surefire way to destroy all that extra nif data, aside from the basic trishapes. Instead of converting, you can just click on the words 'editable mesh' that appears near the upper right hand corner, as seen highlighted in blue in the 3rd image of this mod page.
For the words 'editable mesh' to appear in the selection box/window, you have to make sure your active cursor focus is on the mesh itself, so the cursor looks like a plus sign, and not some other tool, like the magnifying glass from zoom, for instance. You also have to make sure the 2nd tab is active (the one that looks like a little blue rainbow, rather than the first tab that looks like a little yellow sun).
Then, when you click on 'editable mesh', 3DS Max should give you a warning indicating that performing edits may ruin that extra data. I click 'yes', and then perform my edits. My edits were small, so I was able to preserve all the extra nif data upon export (except when dealing with the collision mesh for the 'drop-able' version of the nif - that requires chunk merge). I have no doubt, however, that making substantial changes to an existing nif will, at some point, corrupt things like bone/skin data, at which point you would probably have to know how to design those elements from scratch within 3DS Max.
Nightasy's old 3DS Max youtube tutorial series is also still very helpful.
And that is about the extent of advice I can give on 3DS Max given my VERY limited experience.
edit
Oh, and here's one other critical little pitfall to look out for:
Oftentimes the main txt field of a nif branch will get reset to some generic value when exporting from 3DS Max. To see if this is happening you have to open the original nif in nifskope side by side with your edited nif, and then compare the txt field for each branch as it appears in the bottom window of nifskope (the txt field will be near the top of that bottom window), to make sure the txt fields match. If they don't match, edit the txt field in the edited nif to match the txt field of the original.
Btw, this was all done with the 2016 version of 3DS Max, because I had some issues with the 2017 nif plugin.